The School for Heiresses

by Sabrina Jeffries

Xanthia squeezed her hand. “We shall be fine anywhere, then.”

  “No, wait.” Lady Sharpe laid a hand on Xanthia’s arm, and looked past her. “Christine, my dear, would you mind awfully changing bedchambers? I should like to put Xanthia and Martinique together.”

  Mrs. Ambrose looked irritated. “Pamela, where shall Jenks sleep?” she asked. “I have been putting her in the adjoining room, in case I get one of my headaches at night.”

  Rothewell stepped forward. “I do not need the suite,” he said. “Why do you not have it, Mrs. Ambrose? Surely there is another bedchamber with a view of the lake?”

  “Yes, the room to the left of the suite has a fine view,” said Lady Sharpe. “It is frightfully small—but it does have a pretty balcony.”

  “Ah, a place to smoke my cheroots,” murmured Rothewell.

  Mrs. Ambrose cast another look at Rothewell. “Nextto the suite?” she said, her eyes alight with sudden mischief. “I must have Jenks move my things straightaway. If, of course, you really do not mind our being neighbors, my lord?”

  Rothewell finally smiled. “Nothing would please me more.”

  The footmen were sent scurrying off to deliver luggage hither and yon, and within the hour, the family was again reassembled, this time in a long, sunny withdrawing room hung with some two dozen portraits. The children, Louisa and Judith, were brought in for introductions just as Lord Sharpe joined them, still in his boots and breeches. He was a large, affable gentleman with laughing eyes and a vanishing hairline. He kissed his daughters with unabashed affection, then bowed low over Martinique’s hand, declaring himself delighted.

  “My dear,” he said to his wife, “Rothewell has given you an easy task. Bringing this exotic beauty out come spring will be no chore for you. But I shall likely die of exhaustion from beating back the suitors from our door.”

  Everyone laughed, save for Martinique, who felt her cheeks flame, and St. Vrain, who had propped himself languidly by one of the long, deep windows, his eyes moving over the crowd like quicksilver. Martinique wondered why he was there. To amuse Mrs. Ambrose, no doubt. There was a certain wariness in Lady Sharpe’s gaze each time she glanced at the young man.

  Though she, too, kept cutting odd, dark looks in the direction of St. Vrain, Mrs. Ambrose had clearly laid claim to Rothewell. He did not seem entirely displeased by her attentions. Oblivious to it all, Great-Aunt Olivia pounced at once upon Xanthia, peppering her with questions about her marital plans—or lack thereof.

  Xanthia gave a muted smile. “I thank you, Aunt Olivia, for your concern, but my time is devoted to our shipping concerns just now.”

  “Nonsense!” said Olivia, rapping her cane on the floor. “Women have no businessin business, my girl.”

  “Things are done differently in Barbados, Aunt.”

  “Not that differently, I’ll wager,” said Olivia with asperity. “Let Kieran tend to such things, and get on with your life. You are already on the shelf—and covered with a layer of dust.”

  Aunt Xanthia looked embarrassed. “Kieran runs our plantations,” she explained, dropping her voice. “I see to the shipping. After Luke died, there simply was no one else.” She cast a glance in Martinique’s direction. “Though perhaps someday Martinique will take an interest? She is, after all, a part-owner.”

  Olivia reared back in her chair. “But the girl is to go to Town and find a husband,” she said, thumping her stick on the floor. “Rothewell says she is to stay in England permanently.”

  Xanthia cast a sidelong look in Rothewell’s direction. “That shall be Martinique’s decision,” she said quietly. “My brother does not own the whole of Barbados, much as he might think otherwise. But as to our shipping concerns, we are soon to open a London office. Eventually, we shall move Neville Shipping altogether.”

  The old woman’s hand still clutched her walking stick as if she might snatch it up and flail someone at any moment. “Shipping! Sugar!” she grumbled. “I should rather know why Rothewell has let his estate in Cheshire go to hell. I hear he has never even laid eyes on it.”

  “It is let,” Xanthia countered. “The tenant is very responsible.”

  Martinique slipped from her chair, and began to drift around the room. Estate matters did not interest her, nor did the portraits which covered the far wall of Lady Sharpe’s drawing room. Nonetheless, she feigned a burning desire to study each in detail, thus distancing herself from the family which still felt so very foreign to her.

  So the family business—at least one of them—was moving to London.How odd. The Neville shipping empire was vast. Though her stepfather had begun it with just two dilapidated schooners, Neville’s merchantmen and sleek, modern clippers now plied the world’s oceans from the West Indies to France and England, as well as India and Africa, and most points in between.

  Neville Shipping had been started, her stepfather used to joke, by Martinique’s mother, Annemarie. The original ships had been a parting gift from her wealthy French lover—Martinique’s father—upon his decision to take a wife: a pale, pretty Parisian girl of flawless breeding. Annemarie’s remaining in the French West Indies was out of the question. So, with the understanding that she would never again darken his door, he gave his mistress a fistful of francs, the titles to two of his oldest vessels, and a good, swift shove off the dock onto a Barbados-bound mail packet. And that was that.

  Still, it had ended well enough. Martinique’s mother had ended up with a handsome younger man—one who loved her enough to marry her. Martinique had ended up with an unusual Christian name, a fine old English surname, and a stepfather whom she’d worshiped. And as to her birth father—well,he had ended up in insolvent debtor’s court. His pretty French bride had soon bankrupted him, and his ships were sold off to satisfy his salivating creditors. Luke Neville had picked over the fleet, taking only the best to join the dozen his family owned by then. And that, Martinique decided, was a fine definition of justice.

  “She was handsome in her youth, was she not?”

  The low, rich voice came out of nowhere, sending a strange shiver down Martinique’s spine. “I—I beg your pardon?” She turned to see that Lord St. Vrain stood at her side.“

  Your great-aunt Olivia,” he said quietly. “I am reliably informed that the portrait you are so intently studying is hers, painted some weeks after her marriage.”

  “Vraiment, monsieur?”Martinique managed. “To be sure, I did not recognize her.”

  “Nor did I,” he confessed. “I am shocked the artist caught her without that infernal stick.”

  Martinique struggled to keep from laughing. “Does she never let go of it?”

  “Not that I have seen.” He cast a speciously wary glance in Great-Aunt Olivia’s direction. “And I have been hanging about here for the last six weeks or so. She has even brandished it at me once or twice.”

  Martinique grinned. “Yes, you look the type who might warrant an occasional caning,” she said. “Has Mrs. Ambrose thrown you over for my uncle, do you think?”

  For an instant, his eyes widened, and then he, too, was compelled to suppress a burst of laughter. “I cannot say,” he finally answered. “My prospects look grim at present, do they not?

  “She does seem to have shifted her interest,” said Martinique. “Are you poor,monsieur ?”

  “Am Ipoor ?” he echoed incredulously. “Oh, yes, I take your point! No, my dear child. I am quite astonishingly rich—but alas, not very biddable. Oh, Lord. Christine has poor Rothewell by the arm again. It looks as though they are headed toward the solarium.”

  “Oh, she shall be back soon enough,” she reassured him. “Rothewell is intractable, too—and often unpleasant in the bargain.”

  He turned to look at her, his dark eyes dancing. “Good God, poor Sharpe was sadly mistaken,” he said in a low undertone. “Pamela is going to have a devil of a time with you. Do they really mean to marry you off?”

  “They think so.” Martinique lifted one shoulder. “But I think I should be better please
d to work in the shipping business with Aunt Xanthia.”

  He cocked one slashing black eyebrow. “Inbusiness ?” he echoed. “They really must do things differently in the islands.”

  “West Indian society has fewer strictures,oui. ”

  His clear blue eyes held hers pensively. “I thought every young lady wished to marry,” he finally said. “Do you not?”

  Again, the shrug. “If I fell desperately in love, perhaps,” she said. “But otherwise? It seems unnecessary.”

  “I do not think the English nobility are permitted either love or desperation,” he said dryly.

  “My parents fell deeply in love,” she answered. “And I begin to believe,monsieur, that I, too, shall hold out for such depth of emotion.”

  “Your mother was French, I understand?”

  Martinique smiled faintly. “Mostly, yes.”

  He smiled. “Half French, and half English,” he mused, studying her. “A remarkable combination.”

  She gave another light laugh. She wished he were not quite so handsome, as it was more than a little unsettling.“Non, monsieur,” she corrected. “I was the late Lord Rothewell’s stepdaughter. There is not a drop of English blood in me.”

  “Ah.” His dark, slashing eyebrows went up again. “I see.”

  St. Vrain studied the lovely breath of spring who stood before him. It had been a long time since he had conversed with anyone who seemed so full of life—or innocence. And she wished to fall in love. How quaint the notion seemed to him now. Thank God it was not his obligation to disabuse the girl of her dreams. Life, and Lord Rothewell, would likely do so soon enough.

  As if by unspoken agreement, they had begun to stroll around the room. No one had seemed to notice her absence from the older ladies’ conversation. “You have been away at school until recently, I collect?”

  “Oui, monsieur.”She was clutching her hands at the small of her back as they strolled, looking quite perfectly at ease with him, more fool she. “I was six years at Mrs. Harris’s.”

  “Mrs. Harris?” he said. “Ought I to know her?”

  Martinique cocked her head and smiled. “Theton calls it Mrs. Harris’s School for Heiresses,” she said. “The place is infamous. Where have you been hiding, St. Vrain?”

  “In Paris,” he said matter-of-factly. “What, pray, is so infamous about it?”

  “It is the school where the very wealthiest of England’s nouveau riche girls are sent, so that they might learn how to feint and parry with society’s rakes, rogues and fortune hunters.”

  Against his better judgment, his smile deepened to a grin, and then to a laugh. “Good God, you are jesting, are you not?”

  “Oh, no,monsieur, ” she said solemnly. “By the way, are you a rake? Or a rogue?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  The chit grinned at him. “Well, you say you are quite rich. So you cannot be a fortune hunter.”

  She was perfectly sincere. “Is every man who seeks your company one of the three?”

  “So Mrs. Harris would have us believe.”

  Impulsively, he reached down and took her hand. “I wish I could say she was wrong, my dear,” he answered, giving her fingers a reassuring squeeze. “But I fear she may have the right of it, no matter how cynical the sentiment.”

  Somehow, they had stopped walking. Miss Neville looked up at him from beneath a sweep of dark lashes, and something in his stomach twisted unexpectedly. “You…you are quite beautiful, my dear.” The words came out more urgent than he had intended. “I think that you really must heed your Mrs. Harris. And I—well, I ought not be alone with you.”

  “We are not alone.” Her gaze was warm and steady as she studied him. “I wonder,monsieur, if we mightn’t be kindred spirits, you and I.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Again she gave that charming, Gallic shrug. “Are you not weary of being sought out for your beauty and your wealth?” she suggested. “Do you not wish that just once, you might attract the attentions of someone who wanted…nothing? Or who wanted, perhaps, to know the depth of your thinking and the turn of your mind?”

  St. Vrain winced. “I am a man, my dear child,” he said. “We have few deep thoughts, and are pretty well-satisfied to be wanted for any reason whatsoever—ifthe lady is lovely enough.”

  “Is Mrs. Ambrose lovely enough?”

  “She is a beautiful ornament for a man’s arm,” he replied. “But I am not fool enough to mistake Mrs. Ambrose’s attentions for anything other what they are: a sign of boredom, and a manifestation, perhaps, of her lingering grief.”

  “Grief?”

  “She is newly widowed,” he said quietly. “You are very young, Miss Neville. You cannot know what it is to lose one’s companion too soon. It…does things. It disorders the mind. You…well, you blame yourself. And sometimes you will seize upon any diversion, any distraction, in order to forget it.”

  “Ah,” she said. “You have known great unhappiness, I think.”

  “Who has not?” he asked rhetorically.

  She managed to smile. “Let us speak of something more pleasant,” she suggested. “Tell me of Paris; of what it is like to live there. I long so desperately to see it.”

  “Then you must find a handsome man,chéri, and charm him into taking you.”

  “Yes.” She hesitated. “Yes, perhaps I shall.”

  A moment of awkwardness ensued, but he bridged it smoothly. “Then I shall give you the loan of my little house, Miss Neville,” he said. “It is small, but idyllic—quite perfect for a wedding trip, I think. So if you go to London, and find that husband after all—”

  A rustle of silk cut him off. “Why, there you are, St. Vrain!”

  Lady Sharpe drew up beside him, her expression one of mild alarm. Ah, he understood too well that look. He was here on her sufferance. His presence at Highwood might be tolerated at tea or at dinner—or even in Christine’s bed, so long as it was discreetly done. But it would not be tolerated at all, were he to go about cornering the family’s pretty virgins.

  He stepped away, wondering what had compelled him to cling to the chit’s hand. He ought to be bloody grateful for Lady Sharpe’s interruption.

  “I was just telling Miss Neville what little I knew of these portraits,” he said with a dismissive bow. “She has a keen interest in genealogy, but alas, I cannot recall all the names. Would you be so kind?”

  Then, without looking at the girl again, he turned on his heel and left.

  Dinner that evening was a pleasant affair, and Martinique found Lord Sharpe a most welcoming host. Afterward, Great-Aunt Olivia retired for the evening. Martinique envied the old woman her bed; the last leg of the journey from London had been wearying. But when Cousin Pamela suggested a game of whist, Martinique smiled and joined everyone in the parlor, declaring that she would watch—if, she silently added, she could keep her eyes from the intriguing Lord St. Vrain.

  Mrs. Ambrose also declined a place at the table. St. Vrain seemed content to sip his brandy by the roaring hearth and observe the play as well. Despite an occasional glance in his direction, Martinique kept her distance. She had sensed Cousin Pamela’s displeasure at their tête-à-tête in the drawing room.

  She was tempted, of course, to continue flirting with him. It was a little dull at Highwood after the intellectual stimulation of Mrs. Harris’s. Moreover, St. Vrain was charming, and almost disturbingly attractive. But even more dangerous than that, he seemed soreal to her. There was a depth and a darkness to him which she yearned to understand. And there was something in his glittering gaze which set her pulse to fluttering, and left a strange, empty yearning in the pit of her stomach.

  Martinique knew that emotion for what it was—desire—though she’d little experience with it. Her mother had been well-schooled in the art of creating it; of fanning its flames, of making heads turn. Even as a child, Martinique had been aware of her mother’s mysterious allure. Had the skill somehow passed, unbidden and unspoken, from mother to daughter
? Martinique rather doubted it. Nonetheless, desire was a basic human emotion. To ignore its importance might mean a life of unhappiness.

  And now Rothewell would likely try to force her into an arranged marriage, just to be rid of her. To marry a man she did not desire would be foolish. Yet to court disaster by flirting with a man of St. Vrain’s ilk would be more foolish still, no matter how many little shivers he sent down her spine. Better to leave that sort of gentleman to women of Mrs. Ambrose’s experience. Martinique turned in her chair to face the gaming table, and did not look at him again.

  The card game progressed amidst a great deal of laughter and good-natured teasing. A tray of coffee was brought, more candles lit and the fires stoked by the footmen. Eventually, St. Vrain excused himself. At once, Mrs. Ambrose stood, and went slinking from the room, winding her way past the furnishings like a cat after a mouse, and she looked in an ill humor.

  With St. Vrain gone, Martinique glanced around for something with which to entertain herself, and spied the door to Lord Sharpe’s library. During their brief tour of Highwood, Pamela had encouraged them to make use of it at their leisure. Well, she was very much at leisure now. There was nothing beautiful left to look at, surreptitiously or otherwise, and the card game was no longer enough to keep her awake.

  Inside the library, a low fire had been lit, and a branch of candles sat on a side table nearby, casting a soft, flickering glow over one corner of the expansive room. Martinique lit a single candle, and drifted along the shelves until she found a book of botanical sketches. She returned with it to the hearth, and curled up in a worn but comfortable high-backed chair which faced the fire.

  It was, in fact, just a little too comfortable. One yawn after another, she made it as far as page twenty-two—crataegus laevigata,the smooth hawthorn—before succumbing to the soft embrace of the old leather. She could not have drowsed for more than five minutes, however, when she was bestirred by the sound of the door at the far end of the room.

  “In here, Justin,” said a female voice. “I must speak to you.”

  Martinique jerked upright, almost sending her book to the floor.